


Reconstruct

by Forest_Girl



Series: Reconnect [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Aradia remembers too, Dave remembers everything due to being a time player, F/F, F/M, M/M, Major Character Death refers to Dave's memories, Multi, and this fucks with Dave a pretty big amount, but no one else does
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-22 03:33:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2492915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Forest_Girl/pseuds/Forest_Girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When SBURB ended, only the Time Players could remember.</p>
<p>Dave's lived thousands of lifetimes, some good and some bad. In some he finds friends and in others he doesn't. Over thousands of years, through the BC and AD eras, Dave slowly starts to fall into pieces from all the memories he wishes to lose, including the ones that force him to realize he fucked up so much.</p>
<p>On September 3rd, 2014, with no sign of a new SBURB on the horizon, Dave Strider finds the one true rarity among his reincarnated friends.</p>
<p>John Egbert, who he's only seen twice in his reincarnated adventures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Re-Introduce

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt given to me by my good friend Time, in which I went insane and decided to make this multi-chapter fic with both John and Dave's point of view.
> 
> In other words, I am well and truly fucked.

The worst thing about being a time player is that, after you win and you’re ascended, you remember everything.

Every life. Every second. Every moment. With perfect clarity.

You remember John, and his derpy face. You remember Jade, two buck teeth poking out from her other lip as she smiled at you (although, that memory came from Davesprite, who had fused with you in the end. his last words before that final second were at least i get to be the real dave now). You remember Rose and her psychoanalyzing bullshit, you miss it now though.

You remember the trolls you met. You remember all of them, from the dreambubbles, the meteor, and the final battle. You remember Karkat with his short posture, nubby horns, and a voice that was always yelling. You remember Kanaya with her soothing voice, glowing skin, and normally calm composure. You remember Terezi, the smilling, laughing troll in the beginning of the three year trip that turned into a wreck by the end (and only died and then ascended after Gamzee brought her near death, Roxy creating a Quest Crypt at the last minute). You remember Gamzee. That’s all you need to say about him.  


(psychopath, murderer, dont come near me ever again, you killed her, you killed terezi, glad i cut off your head, you got my pjs dirty you fuck, death is never good enough for you and every death after will only be the icing on the cake)

Every lifetime, you can say few things with certainty. Every time you have impossibly pale hair, skin, and blood red eyes. You have a near omniscient knowledge of what has happened every so often in the past years (most history books are fucking bullshit, the civil war had a shit ton more deaths than what they wrote down) though it doesn’t kick in til about year three or four. The first life you remember is your scratched you’s life, then normal you’s and then every life after that. There are a lot when you reach the 0 BCE point.

You could meet every one in one life, no one in another, only a few, or just barely all of them but still not all in the current life. Most of the time you’ll have to be the one to hammer it into their brains, but sometimes Aradia (thank god for Aradia) is the one to do it. The first life you lived, you met Sollux first (fully human, no trolls exist on the new planet, which irks you to no end). The first reaction was joy, followed by disappointment, confusion, anger, acceptance, and then you patiently went it over with him.  
That was the normal reaction to the first ten or so reincarnations. By then, you had gotten used to it, and you never really got enjoyed or disappointed anymore. You did get angry, but not like one of Karkat’s volatile reactions. Now, at year 2014 (so far there are no signs of a new SBURB on the horizon, thank gog) you are going through another torturous teenage life and about to start 11th grade.

New things about this life, you have a reincarnated Bro, Alpha you, and Dirk living under the same roof. The Lalondes (Roxy, Beta mom, and Rose) are related to you. You got Dirk, Roxy and Rose to remember, but you haven’t told your guardians a thing in fear of them sending you to a private school. Or an insane asylum. Both wouldn’t be nice. You once told Jade about your past lives in the seventeenth century, and then got sent to the loony bin. That was the shittiest experience because, at the time, there were near zero laws dicating what you could and couldn’t do to a patient there. You were basically tortured until you finally broke and managed to commit suicide. That time you were completely okay with performing it.

Thankfully, everyone at your place doesn’t mind strifing. You have swords all over the place and, honestly, it’s the closest you’ll get to your original life. The day before, the roof had some weird liquid on it and, in the middle of fighting D, you slipped and sprained your ankle. You needed a cast, and it was a treat that you had school the next day.

First and second period were a breeze, first being Gym and the second one followed by Traditional Art. Third period was up next and it was your nemesis, Chemistry. Chemistry can go fuck itself with its own Chemical formulas. You’ve always hated Chemistry, and always will from your first life to your last. So, when you start to run late to the class, you just decide “fuck it” and kick open the door.

Doing so invoked a heated glare from the teacher (already you can tell that he’s Karkat, age has never really been a constant as for when you meet them or when you see them) and a chorus of giggles from a majority of the class. You sit in one of the only few seats left. You’re in the front – god dammit – so that means no super ironic antics which would make this class about 70% better.

A note’s passed to you. Fuck, what is up with people? This isn’t the fucking seventies, you can text and just poke a shoulder and talk to people. Regardless, you look at the note.

Your heart drops.

hi, i’m john! what’s your name?


	2. Repair

Here’s the thing about John Egbert: you’ve only met him twice in all of your lifetimes.

The first time was when you had just gotten off the meteor through Jade’s weird teleporting shtick. You had hugged for a long time because it had been three years of not seeing your best-human-bro and a lot of psychological shit with Rose, Terezi and Gamzee. He had never really let go of the fact that you sent him that stupid Juggalo video.

The second time was after you won the game and entered the door to your new galaxy and managed to all get back together for a slightly normal life. You did have to remind everyone alongside Aradia, but it was easy since they were all there and you could all console each other. In that second lifetime, you realized something very important. While you were more focused on kicking Jack’s ass (along with cutting off Lord English’s peg leg) in the game, with the sudden downtime and normality you realized that you might be pushing the bromance limits. In fact, you realized that you might be falling down a steep slope with Egbert’s plush rump and dorky grin at the bottom.

TL;DR, you were in love with Egbert and had fallen super hard, but at the time you hadn’t realized it just yet.

And then, the moment you were going to acknowledge this and maybe, oh you don’t know, tell John that you might have an itty bitty crush on him, somehow you all died and became reincarnated. To this day, you have zero fucking clue as to what happened. Whenever you find Aradia, you try to discuss what happened in that one fatal moment, but neither of you can figure it out. It’s like the mystery of the Big Bang, there’s a shit ton of evidence that it could have happened, but we have no clue what was there before and what caused everything to blow.

And ever since that second life, you’ve never been able to find John.

~~~~~

Three months of talking to the dork, and you haven’t let anything slip about the past lives.

Honestly, you would love to tell him everything. Spill your guts out to him and watch as that horrified realization of “oh shit, I used to be a god” cross over his face. But doing that… it would crush him. He would know that his Dad died. He would know that his Nanna (sister, in this universe, anyway) became an odd sprite and, in a scratched timeline, died, ascended, and then became brainwashed to kill him. He would know that Jade (who Rose has found but you are staying right the fuck away from her, ever since loony town you don’t want to push your luck) went batshit too, ordered Jane to kill Karkat, became near omnipotent, and then got crushed by a house.

You’ve dealt with these memories so many times that you’ve become desensitized to them. Grief has become a thing of the past, but depression has not. Not finding the one guy you keep loving in every reincarnation has worn down on your heart and mind enough to push you to do some stupid shit. A few times you’ve commited suicide (53), a couple of times you have actually had a psychotic breakdown and killed a few people (27 times 52 mortally wounded and 18 killed. you couldve done better), once you tried a murder suicide (that just ended in a murder. the husband came home and shot you in the back of the head, so technically it was a double murder), and then finally you were present in 9/11 and were crushed in an attempt to rescue a five year old that had showed up with their parents (he was later burnt to death when he strayed too close to raging flame).

John has… probably never remembered. Aradia would have mentioned if she had met him before and reminded him, so he never must’ve had to deal with shit. But now… you don’t know what to do. Reminding him would be amazing because you would have another god reborn and maybe more luck at kindling a relationship, but at the same time he could break mentally, and then that blows your chances of ever seeing him again.

One time, Dirk was in a different class than you and had sent you a message over Pesterchum.

TT: Is it hard?  
TG: is what hard.  
TT: Dealing with all the guilt and memories you had, is it hard?  
TG: yeah  
TG: especially since i can sometimes never find you guys  
TG: i have ways of dealing with it though  
TT: Like what?  
TG: you got a flashback in the middle of class didnt you  
TT: Yeah, a pretty bad one too. Decapitating myself isn’t a nice thing to think about when you’re dealing with a blow torch.  
TG: when im in public and i get one, i try to think of the people that i know that could be going through the same thing  
TT: But what if you haven’t met anyone?  
TG: then i think about the people i knew and will forever know  
TG: its easy most of the time  


~~~~~

But really, it’s not.

Yes, when you’re in public that is what you do to keep yourself from having a mental breakdown. But overtime, especially when dealing with a stressful situation, you need something more than memories which can just resurface the ones that dig into your skin harder than any blade. D (Alpha you, who is actually named Richard, who then gained the nickname Dick, and then that turned to D) has all this fancy champagne around the apartment. You’ve had champagne before and it didn’t really fit your tastes, but it was certainly better than rum or beer. 

When you’re all alone, Dirk and D in Hollywood and Bro at a gig, you might sneak yourself a glass. Or two. Or maybe the whole bottle. This is one of those situations where you’ll take the whole bottle. You always rationalize your underage drinking with “well im technically hundreds of centuries old and just in a 16 year olds body so its okay.”

The first sip is always the worse because it burns your throat and tongue and everything else on its way down, but in all honesty it just desensitizes you more. You wouldn’t really say that you’re alcoholic, because each new life your liver is revived and your tolerance to alcohol is always reset because of this. You’ve only drank the fancy champagne a few times, but now you might be able to take half the bottle without blacking out, but just on the verge of being so drunk you will be completely fucking incapacitated.

This is when your drunken mind decides to make the absolutely fucking stupid idea to contact John at two in the morning.

~~~~~

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] \--

TG: i knew you in a past life yknow  
EB: what?  
TG: you kmow  
TG: reincartnation an all of thas jazz  
TG: you gety teh drill  
EB: dave are you drunk?  
EB: or high?  
EB: or on something else that would make you pester me at two am with weird Buddhist stuff???  
TG: no it nakes toatl sdnse  
TG: an i mightev had a bit od ds hiddn chanpagfne  
TG: no biggeis  
EB: dave holy shit!

After that, you drop your phone onto your chest and just… drift in the cloud of alcohol. Your brain is as light as a cloud and your limbs feel tingly. Not like they’ve fallen asleep or anything its just… they feel so light you can’t feel anything they touch (the screen, your phone, the bed sheets) but they’re somehow still anchored to the earth. You almost want to just... stand up and dance around. See how much of the room you’d destroy before Bro came back. That would be bad, wouldn’t it? Seeing a seventeen year old piss drunk, dancing to an imaginary beat and splashing alcohol all over the clothing and hardware drives scattered around the floor.

You wake up to the door opening. You aren’t panicking, really, since Bro will just crash on the futon and you can deal with the hangover tomorrow. Your eyes slowly close again, unprotected with your shades on the floor besides you.

When your eyes open again, they’re in response to the pain on your cheek. A slap. Someone slapped you. What would be anger is replaced with an odd calm from the amount of alcohol in your system. That and John is above you. John’s, at the very least, someone you can talk to without panicking or freaking out. John was nice.

“Hey John, how goes the – hic- the family?”

John says… something in response. You can’t really hear it over the odd pounding in your ears and the fact that your face is incredibly warm. Like, warmer than it was in the past few minutes, is that normal?

“’m fine Johnny.” Wow you are slurring a lot, but honestly, you are mainly just trying to figure out what he might want. “What’s goin’ on? Does Terezi need some help with the Faygo or somethin’?” John goes very still above you, and you squit your eyes, trying to see him clearly through your blurred vision.

“What did you say?” Okay, the alcohol’s fading slightly, so hearing him has become easier.

Who needs help? You need help? What about Rose, she okay with the wine?” John looks confused, and the frustrated as he pinches his nose with his index finger and thumb. He mutters something under his breath, something far too quiet for you to hear despite your hearing slowly improving. He moves to leave, about to get off the bed, but you somehow get up and manage to grab his wrist in a vice grip. The both of you are decently surprised.

“No, don’t leave.” You draw out the no, and you watch as another wave of frustration passes over John’s face before he sighs in defeat. He mutters something along the lines of “I’m keeping my clothes on asshole” before he stands up and pulls back the covers, tucking both of you underneath the decently thick blanket and sighing. You take a deep breath in and let it out, letting the tranquility of the current situation wash over you before finally having a good night’s rest.


	3. Reseal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You have fucked up majorly, there is no other way to put it, and you have hoped that everything you did was a dream. A sick, fucked up dream where you fucked over John’s life and can’t repair it, but regardless, a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, a minor case of writers block and no time to write made this chapter come out later. Hopefully I will be able to pump out the last chapter and then write John's half and post that up to.

God your head hurts. There’s a blanket carefully bunched around you, your shades are nowhere on your face (you can’t feel the weight of it on your face) and, for some reason, there are limbs wrapped around your body. 

What the almighty fuck happened after the few swigs of champagne? Actually that question can wait; your stomach feels like it’s been chopped up to bits and needs to come up to grace the world. You throw off the blanket, detangle yourself from the limbs hanging on you (seriously, when did this occur?) and flash step straight to the bathroom. The contents of your stomach crawl up your throat and are expelled into the half-open toilet bowl. You spend a good three minutes hovering over the toilet, your body continuing to attempt to rid itself of the alcohol yFou ingested.

Once you’re done (headache still awful, stomach feels awful, shades are still missing, no idea who was in your bed with you) you open the mirror-cabinet above the sink and find the bottle of Tylenol that your brothers are always stocked up on. You take two and swallow them dry, not caring about the annoying burn you feel in your throat, and try to think about what happened.

You got drunk, _that_ much was obvious. So far, everything is remaining a gigantic blur, but a few choice moments stand out in relief. At one point, you wondered if it was physically possible for the tooth fairy to swallow Santa Claus in one gulp. You discovered a very long time ago that you were one of those weird drunks that just spit out the oddest bullshit without a single scrap of it going through the nice filter in your brain that tells you what is socially acceptable. At another you… _think_ you grabbed your phone and-

“Dave? Are you okay?”

No.

Oh sweet mother of god, please don’t tell me that you fucking pestered.

You did. John is standing in the doorway to the bathroom, his hair is tussled and his shirt and ratty jeans are wrinkled horribly (probably from sleeping with you what the fuck is _wrong_ with you _what did you do_ ). He looks worried, almost panicked, and you are so tempted to run. Every muscle in your body is tense, either out of fear or some odd mixture of anger and nervousness.

“Dave, seriously, are you okay? You drank a lot of that stuff last night and-” He moved out of the doorway. Dave Strider, you better run like a god damn maniac flooring the gas pedal with every intention of running every god damn red light. Civilians in the way? Fuck them, you are a god on a mission and you give zero fucks you are running.

You thank every living thing you can name off the top of your head for allowing you to have guardians that know how to flash step and having the muscle mass to do it. The door to the apartment opens (for some reason Bro isn’t on the futon, which worries you slightly) and you briefly hear John shout your name before you slam the door shut behind you. You flash step down the stairs, something that Bro and D are completely against you and Dirk doing but now you don’t give two shits, and run out the door into the open streets.  
You can’t stop thinking of John shouting your name.

~~~~~

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] \--

TG: rose get your ass in here now i need to talk to you  
TG: seriously get your plump rump over to the godliness showdown going on downtown  
TG: please  
TT: Whatever could be the matter, dearest ecto-brother?  
TG: oh god youre bringing in the ectoshiz  
TG: you can tell im in distress cant you  
TT: As a Seer of Light, oh so gloriously reminded by you, I have a natural ability to see into the future, albeit with a few limitations.  
TT: I could tell that you would pester me soon, and it would be a serious topic, but anything more than that was, unfortunately, obscured.  
TG: okay good maybe you can actually help me  
TG: so i know you managed to find Kanaya in beautiful new york where its either raining or snowing this all year long  
TT: Yes that is an event that occurred.  
TT: We are now in a flourishing relationship, and we both have a mutual understanding of what we talk about due to the game.  
TT: She’s one of the few people, besides you and the other young members of the family, which I can discuss with frequently and with ease.  
TG: okay yeah thats my problem  
TG: i found egbert a few months ago and i want to tell him  
TG: and last night i might’ve accidentally told him a few things about the game and i really didnt mean to but it was two am and i was tired and i completely forgot  
TG: so now i might potentially have an unstable john that doesnt really understand the full capabilities of his powers and i dont know what to do  
TT: Where are you now?  
TG: in the middle of a family park hiding from the guy who could destroy seattle  
TG: mommy what is that in the distance  
TG: that sweetheart is a hurricane caused by a prepubescent teen that has ptsd caused by his best friend and we are all going to die  
TT: Unfortunately Dave, this is something I can’t give you much advice on what to do.  
TT: My situation with Kanaya was different, as I had the ability to sit down with her in one sitting and, at the very worst, she would have a more volatile temper or suddenly start speaking in Alternian during my explanation.  
TT: My advice would be to contact John again and see what his current mental state is.  
TT: If he seems to be as stable as he was before the previous night, then I would try to wait it out and see if you can talk to him and private before discussing this. If he doesn’t seem okay, or is questioning you about what you said, then try to figure out where he is, and again, talk to him in private.  
TG: is there anything else you can tell me  
TT: There isn’t much more I can say. This situation needs to be treated carefully, as John was as much of an enigma to me as he was to everyone else in our previous lives. There is no telling what could happen if this works out incorrectly.  
TG: okay  
TG: okay thanks rose

\-- turntechGodhead [TG ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] –-

~~~~~

Long ago you realized that benches were horribly uncomfortable to lie on. You also learned that they were even worse when you were near a park filled with happy, screaming children. Your immediate destination was a very popular child playground, fully equipped with the pogo animals, shitty jungle gyms and fully populated swings.

Today you are lying on a metal bench right next to a park filled with screaming kids as they run around the jungle gyms and pogo horses.  
You have fucked up majorly, there is no other way to put it, and you have hoped that everything you did was a dream. A sick, fucked up dream where you fucked over John’s life and can’t repair it, but regardless, a dream.

The walk home is long, and you don’t pay attention to anyone that’s around you. You had placed on your headphones after you had finished your conversation with Rose, and the world is filled with nothing but explicit lyrics, decent rhythm, and your guilt.

You open the door to your apartment, and Bro’s there. He slightly turns his head and then cocks it to the right, probably watching a shitty skateboarding program, but still wondering if you’re okay. This is the normal routine when he sees you have headphones on, it means your upset and don’t really want to talk, and Bro recognizes it and just gives a few minimal movements to send the message across. He still cares, even if you don’t feel like talking.

You give a small nod and a thumbs up at the futon before escaping to your room. You had mainly ignored your phone if it let off a little chime from Pesterchum, but your computer is in a frenzy with line after line of blue text.

Christ, you can’t ignore this, can you?

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] –-

EB: dave, please, i know you have your phone on you!  
EB: please, just say something to tell me you’re okay.  
EB: at least tell me why you ran out of the apartment!  
EB: dave, i don’t know where your brothers or sisters are, and i don’t know where you are, so help me out here.  
EB: you said some really weird things last night, i want to talk to you about them.  
EB: not in a bad way or anything, i just want to know what’s going through your head.  
EB: and maybe why your drinking, but we don’t need to bring this up with anyone else!  
EB: not even your bro or dirk or any counselors or therapists or anything.  
EB: dave, seriously, i’m really starting to freak out now.  


Dammit, you can’t ignore him.  


TG: sorry bro  
TG: just got back  
TG: sorry to make you flip  
EB: oh thank god you aren’t dead.  
TG: yeah im not  
TG: thanks for being worried and all that but  
TG: i dont want to talk about this kind of stuff  
TG: not when you dont even know what caused it  
EB: what?  
EB: well then how am i supposed to figure it out?  
TG: couple a words  
TG: lowas  
TG: heir of breath  
TG: windy thing  
TG: sburb  
TG: quest bed  
EB: what is that supposed to mean?  
TG: sleep on it bro  
TG: maybe then youll figure it out

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB] –-

EB: dave, no!

God you hope you haven’t fucked up more than you already have.


End file.
